By Nicole Winfield
Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pope while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which had its premiere at the Rome Film Festival on Wednesday.
The papal thumbs up came midway through the film that delves into issues he cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis said in one of his sit-down interviews for the film. “What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”
While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis endorsed civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriages. However, he had never come out publicly in favor of civil unions as pope.
Director Evgeny Afineevsky had remarkable access to cardinals, the Vatican television archives, and the pope himself. He said he negotiated his way in through persistence, and deliveries of Argentine mate tea and Alfajores cookies that he got to the pope via some well-connected Argentines in Rome.
New York State Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes believes 2021 is the year that the Empire State will get marijuana legalization done.
Cheddar has pulled together a rough timeline of the GameStop tale, from its inauspicious beginnings to becoming one of the biggest stories out of Wall Street since the crash of the housing market.
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A NASA rover has landed on Mars in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on the red planet.
Power was restored to more homes and businesses in Texas after a deadly blast of winter this week overwhelmed the electrical grid and left millions shivering in the cold.
In 1856, a chemistry student named William Henry Perkin accidentally created a strange substance with a rich purple hue. That accident turned out to be the world’s first synthetic dye.
People have taken thousands of cold-stunned sea turtles to a convention center in South Texas in hopes of saving them during the unusually chilly weather.
Cheddar looks at the players in the GameStop stock saga taking part in the House Committee on Financial Services hearing.
Carlo and Baker discuss the latest from Texas as another winter storm is making bad things worse, what to watch in today's big hearing on GameStop, the moment of truth on Mars, and Serena's Open exit.
Anger over Texas' power grid failing in the face of a record winter freeze is mounting. Nearly 3 million customers in the energy capital of the U.S. woke up Wednesday still without power.
